Baroque and Rococo I. (töredék) [antikvár]

THEMATIC APPROACHES TO BAROQUE AND ROCOCO It is generally agreed that the 17th and 18th centuries were an extremely flourishing period in the applied arts. Thus it comes as no surprise to find that artefacts from this period are to be found in great numbers in European museums in general, and in the Hungarian Museum of Applied Arts in particular. The works in its posession are of many different types and may be traced to many different regions and sources. There are also, of course, various different ways in which they may be categorised, according to the particular art historical approach adopted, and to the inherent requirements of the Museum's collection. Whatever system is used, however, it is clearly vital that the fundamental principle of consistency in definition and differentiation is adhered to. The opportunity of gaining an overall view of the collection that was provided by the preparation of this exhibition led to the conclusion that there was no single fundamental characteristic common to all works of the 17th and 18th centuries. Nevertheless, general stylistic affinities which can be subsumed under the headings "Baroque" and "Rococo" do provide the links betwen the artefacts in this otherwise heterogeneous collection. The simplest way to demonstrate this is to place the works in strict chronological order in groups determined by geographical provenance. This traditional method of classification is particularly appropriate in the case of the Museum of Applie.d Arts, because of the richness of its collection. At the same time, by setting up of the exhibition we hoped to draw the attention of visitors to general tendencies of the baroque age, beyond those observable purely in the applied arts, and thus to provide an intellectual portrait of the period. In pursuit of this aim a rather unorthodox approach towards the grouping of objects was adopted, whereby a similarity of subject matter becomes the theme that binds them together, while their formal characteristics — genre, ornamentation, artistic quality and so on — may often be extremely diverse. The first thematically consistent section is concerned with objects designed to express and stimulate religious devotion. These are religious objects, that originally decorated mostly Roman Catholic churches. Baroque art received an enormous and decisive stimulus from the Counter-Reformation, the aim of which was to renew and revive the Catholic religion in the face of the Protestant challenge. The first half of the 17th century thus sees some of the finest creations of the baroque, whose most important charasteristics may be summarised as follows: technical virtuosity, large-scale composition, a wide and dramatic range of emotional content, great plasticity and pathos in representation and exceptional dignity and splendour. The choice of themes, of course, helped these elements to achieve their full effects. The masters of the baroque often turned to mysterious, mystical and miraculous events. A typical example would be an episode from the Revelations of St. John the Divine, the victory of Archangel Michael over Satan. This topic was very popular in the early baroque and appears in diverse genres: book illustration, architectural ornament, statuary and so forth. In Hungary it was so popular that no less than twenty churches feature it in the ornamentation of their pulpits. This frequency may be ascribed to the doctrinal importance attached to the theme by the Jesuits, who regarded the Protestants as heretics and the Reformation as the work of the Devil. The victory of the Archangel Michael is thus symbolic of the victory of the true faith, a pledge that the powers of darkness can be overcome if only there is a return to divine truth, 9